DHH on iPhone 2.0's Glitches

While acknowledging the complexity of Apple's ambitious launch, David Heinemeier Hansson says iPhone 2.0 wasn't ready for prime time on a number of levels.

Combined, it’s a rather big disappointment. I’m surprised just how much impact the small griefs have when they add up to a lack of confidence in the system. It’s a great example of the cumulative effects of problems. They have an exponential damage on the experience. [...]

It feels a little like Apple got swept up in knocking down every single detraction point from 1.0 that they lost sight of what everyone loved about the first version. Yes, it got cheaper (not really), faster (some times), installable apps, and GPS, but it lost a bit of Apple soul in the process.

David also has a laundry list of complaints on stability and performance. I went through his items and ticked off each of the ones I've also noticed (with a 01-10 for how big a problem it's been for me):

[ 10 ] "The entire phone has crashed twice." [MDM: Closer to a half-dozen times for me.]

[ 02 ] "Restarting the phone kinda helps some of these problems, but not for long and it feels so dirty and Windows-like to do." [MDM: I guess. More opinion than observation.]

I'll also add a few of my own:

Wildly-varying response errors. Similar to the screen freeze I guess, I'm getting substantial lag time -- especially between ending a drag gesture and having the thing I was trying to change register the movement. I'm constantly selecting the "wrong" thing for example. Over and over.

The crazy-long Backup time in iTunes. Wow. Can I request a lot fewer of those?

Apps I've removed from the phone mysteriously reappear after the next sync

I've noticed a lot of these too, but I'm surprised that the ridiculously-slow Contacts app wasn't mentioned. Once I tap "Contacts" either on the home screen or in the phone app, it takes about ten seconds before I can do anything. I am using the MobileMe "push," so there might be a correlation there, but...I only have around fifty contacts. iPhone 1.x Contacts.app wasn't nearly that slow.

The re-appearing apps seem to be poor design in the way the iPhone is synced: iTunes installs all of the apps that are checked under the Applications tab of the iPhone page in iTunes. If you delete an app on your phone, it's not unchecked from iTunes on your next sync, so it's reinstalled during that sync.

But at least we can have OmniFocus in our Dock! Makes it all worth it to me.

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